[SGVLUG] aptitude vs apt-get - informative article

[Robert Leyva]

If you are a debian person, this is why using aptitude instead of apt-get
is the recommended course of action. Excerpts from the article:

"...

Further more, apt-get has a big problem that hasn’t really been addressed
until only just recently. The problem is in removing packages. You see,
apt-get does a great job of indentifying what dependencies need to be
installed when you want a certain package, but it fails miserably when you
want to remove that package. If dependencies were required, ‘apt-get
remove’ will remove your packages, but leave orphaned dependencies on your
system. Psychocats.net has a great writeup on this very phenomenon, by
simply installing and removing the package kword. The solution? Aptitude.

...

Aptitude is the superior way to install, remove, upgrade, and otherwise
administer packages on you system with apt. For one, since it’s inception,
aptitude has been solving orphaned dependencies. Second, it has a curses
interface that blows the doors off of dselect. Finally, and most
importantly, it takes advantage of one tool, doing many many functions.
Let’s take a look:

    * aptitude: Running it with no arguments brings up a beautiful
interface to search, navigate, install, update and otherwise
administer packages.
    * aptitude install: Installing software for your system, installing
needed dependencies as well.
    * aptitude remove: Removing packages as well as orphaned dependencies.
    * aptitude purge: Removing packages and orphaned dependencies as well
as any configuration files left behind.
    * aptitude search: Search for packages in the local apt package lists.
    * aptitude update: Update the local packages lists.
    * aptitude upgrade: Upgrade any installed packages that have been
updated.
    * aptitude clean: Delete any downloaded files necessary for installing
the software on your system.
    * aptitude dist-upgrade: Upgrade packages, even if it means
uninstalling certain packages.
    * aptitude show: Show details about a package name.
    * aptitude autoclean: Delete only out-of-date packages, but keep
current ones.
    * aptitude hold: Fix a package at it’s current version, and don’t
update it

...
"
http://pthree.org/2007/08/12/aptitude-vs-apt-get/

Me
-- 
"Knowledge is Power" -- Francis Bacon

Robert Leyva
mrflash818 at geophile.net